Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[gweefry]

I'm trying to stream http://radio.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac - works OK with VLC but MC won't play.  Any suggestions please?

EDIT... I wonder if this is a similar issue? http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=103220.msg716736#msg716736

[Lewin]

Yes, this is the same problem. I have so far only found two FLAC-streaming stations; the one you mention and the one I mentioned. So far, there is no answer to either of our posts.

[Arindelle]

Hi guys look you might not get responses, because there are tons of posts on this. Did you search the forum?

I checked the O.P.s link and I can't get it to play straight form chrome .. so IMO, thats a problem with the site. (or I need Quicktime on my machine which I purposely do not want on my rig)

Short answer ... if it has a specific API (like a built in player, its probably not going to work unless you have the API key (and you know what you are doing). Most real radio stations and things like NPR are going to fall in this category.

Or like Lewin's link, it falls on a flash player ... some times you can get this to work, but often it will not ... you can try changing the browser engine in JRiver options from Chromium to IE or vice versa, and make sure your pluggins/extensions are up to date. The fact that they make these "players" useable on Quicktime or Flash-based players, doesn't mean its going to work internally in JRiver ... there is no internet standard for streaming, and lots of sites go to great length to prevent "for-profit" software like JRiver circumventing their APIs

There are work arounds, like running external programs with JRiver, but the best and easiest way is just to run it using the WDM driver, and not messing with the connected media area. Some like Spotify, Grooveshark will work, but might as well just play it from the browser and take advantage of the JRiver playback engine.

[gweefry]

Thanks for the information about this issue.  Yes, I did search for "streaming flac" and got about a dozen results, few of which seemed to address the problem.  The usual catch-22 problem of a crowded forum - unless you know the cause of the problem you're searching for, it's difficult to provide the search parameters which will provide an adequate answer, so thanks for stepping in.

It may well be that as lossless webstations become more common a more consistent approach will develop.

[Arindelle]

it not a problem to stream flac vs mp3 or another format (not counting bandwidth issues) its that certain direct stream link will work, others that pass through APIs or require flash or quicktime will not (or you have to "jailbreak" it somehow.) .. so searching for streaming in flac is not going to get a hit. The link you posted requires Quicktime I just checked. look at the player that shows if you load it in a browser. WOuldn't matter what format the source is.

Streaming Flac through the WDM driver works. Try it.  Its not a playback issue as much as a UI issue (if using this driver, you get all the audio bennies).

ANother problem is that often you can get some streams to work, but you have to delve into the site itself and not use the main link. Now maybe someone could take the time to help you sort out an individual link. Its not that people don't want to help, but sometimes for specific things like this you have to do the legwork yourself as someone would have to do it for you to find a specific solution per stream.

[gweefry]

I'm afraid I'm a user rather than a techie!  I realise that it's quite possible to play this station from an alternative program and have been doing so.  It just seems anomalous that, given the capabilities of MC, this is one issue it can't handle.

Digging into the forum a little more deeply, I came across this from https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=74078.msg525492#msg525492 dated January 19, 2013 and specifically related to this particular station:

"I've used the m3u link for ogg-flac, but no luck. I linked to this thread in MC18 forum and Matt has confirmed that this does not work. He has put it on his to-do list."  That was 3 years ago.

As I said, I have very restricted in-depth understanding but I had been doing some "legwork" and it would appear that one of the issues here is that the embedded stream (http://amp1.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac) is ogg-encoded.  Is the underlying issue simply that MC is not set up to handle this?

In any event, it's apparent that this has been an issue for some time and it's pretty clear that no headway has been made or is likely to, so I think we have reached the end of this thread!

[Lewin]

While gweefry is more interested in the classical radio.cesnet station, my interests are with www.europaradio.jazz. In fact, these seem to be the only two stations streaming in lossless FLAC.

If I enter www.europaradiojazz.org/stream.flac.m3u into Firefox (Win 8.1), the station plays just fine. For this, it uses the VLC plugin, not Flash. There are also statements on the web, that it works with Foobar2000. Is it really that difficult to make this work from inside MC?

When entering the link into MC, nothing happens, no feedback. Could there at least be a short message displayed "This link is not a supported radio station" ?

[BryanC]

While gweefry is more interested in the classical radio.cesnet station, my interests are with www.europaradio.jazz. In fact, these seem to be the only two stations streaming in lossless FLAC.

If I enter www.europaradiojazz.org/stream.flac.m3u into Firefox (Win 8.1), the station plays just fine. For this, it uses the VLC plugin, not Flash. There are also statements on the web, that it works with Foobar2000. Is it really that difficult to make this work from inside MC?

When entering the link into MC, nothing happens, no feedback. Could there at least be a short message displayed "This link is not a supported radio station" ?

When I open that file it redirects to: http://sr7.inmystream.info:9100/stream.flac

When I try to open the link manually in firefox it tells me the file is corrupt (it thinks it's a video). So this might not exactly be a MC problem, perhaps the other players have workarounds built-in (i.e. play audio stream even when the video is corrupt).

[Arindelle]

While gweefry is more interested in the classical radio.cesnet station, my interests are with www.europaradio.jazz. In fact, these seem to be the only two stations streaming in lossless FLAC.

If I enter www.europaradiojazz.org/stream.flac.m3u into Firefox (Win 8.1), the station plays just fine. For this, it uses the VLC plugin, not Flash. There are also statements on the web, that it works with Foobar2000. Is it really that difficult to make this work from inside MC?

When entering the link into MC, nothing happens, no feedback. Could there at least be a short message displayed "This link is not a supported radio station" ?

I just tried this with three browsers .. first the m3u extention is a playlist extension the real stream link is  http://sr7.inmystream.info:9100/stream.flac ... as Brian just mentioned I see. Chrome it won't play (it looks like a quicktime plugin is required) Firefox it doesn't play either (I don't have a VNC pluggin), Safari downloads it.  Inside of JRiver you have 2 browser engines Chromium and IE. You can try and add pluggins if you want (like the pluggin for VNC if one exists, that you are referring to), but this entails having a panoply of all conceivable plugins for every browser. Now, you have the WDM driver why aren't you using it?? Just so you can choose a shortcut from the tree? If that's the case yep, I'll go out on a limb and say it really is that difficult (or very time consuming) to make it work for every conceivable web stream from the tree, especially when they have developed en entire driver which covers everything that you can stream on your Windows machine.

Anyways, I'll let the developers respond .. I've been wasting my time and yours I fear

[Lewin]

Thanks for your replies, which I appreciate. Here is what happens at my PC:

www.europaradiojazz.org/stream.flac.m3u > If I enter this into Firefox, the station plays just fine (using the VLC plugin). If there is a redirection, it doesn't show in the URL field.

http://sr7.inmystream.info:9100/stream.flac > If I enter this into Firefox, I get a message that the "file is corrupt".

Not sure if this is of any help. However, I predict that we will see more free FLAC radio stations in the future, and maybe even some HD stations (e.g. 24/96 FLAC). It's just a matter of time as bandwith is getting cheaper and cheaper.

[gweefry]

I'm curious about the emphasis on the capability of the browsers.  If I enter a stream, eg http://amp1.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac into File | Open URL, is the implication that MC is entirely reliant on the chosen browser engine?  Despite the ability of MC to play more or less any audio format thrown at it, does its own program have no effect on the parsing and playing of the chosen stream?

[Lewin]

@gweefry

I can't answer your questions, but this may be of some help to you to enjoy the classical music of cesnet in FLAC:

http://radio.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac.xspf

If I enter the above link into Firefox, it loads the VLC plugin and plays fine. I'm listening to it while I type this. However, if I enter the same link into MC, it sais "something went wrong with playback".

Under Tools > Options > Tree and View > Web Browser, I see only a choice between IE and Chromium. I wonder if it were simple to add Firefox and if this would possibly solve the problem? As IE is beeing phased out, they will have to add the new Edge browser to the MC Windows version anyway.

[gweefry]

@Lewin

Thanks for the link - I had spotted it on the distribution page.  At present I tend to use Videolan which works perfectly well.  The trouble is, of course, that when you've organised a system to be based on MC the hassle of coming out, opening a new app, possibly changing the sound driver, etc. seems unnecessary.  As you say, there's a fair chance that lossless streaming will become more common in the future, so its incorporation now would seem sensible.

I can't quite get my head round why two free apps (VLC, Foobar) have no problems at all whereas a well-developed paid program is struggling to provide the same level of delivery.  I don't think we're being unreasonable, but I'm getting vibes that we're rocking the boat!

[imugli]

Playback of flac / ogg streams isn't currently supported, which is why you cannot play it in MC.

I've added a request in the Too Easy III thread, but I don't know that this is a "Too Easy" thing.

[gweefry]

Thanks for that.

Looking at the recent (and not so recent) lists of changes to MC, it seems that most of the efforts are going in to tv and video.  Given that this issue seems to have been in Matt's in-tray for 3 years we might take a guess at its chances!